Israel’s defense minister says the army is using ‘methods’ from the Gaza war in a major attack on Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces are applying lessons learned during the Gaza war to the ongoing “Iron Wall” military operation in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s defense minister said, where troops have killed at least 10 people in Jenin. and ordered residents to flee refugee camps in the area. .
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that the Jenin operation, which is entering its third day, marks a change in Israel’s military plan in the occupied West Bank and that it is “a departure from repeated raids in Gaza.” The first lesson is”.
An Israeli army spokesman declined to give details of the Jenin operation, which began on Tuesday and is less than two years old in Jenin, a longtime stronghold of resistance against the decades-old military occupation of Palestinian land by the Israeli army. The third is major infiltration. .
Residents inside the Jenin refugee camp reported continued gunfire and explosions on Wednesday, while Palestinian health services reported at least four wounded in the camp.
The UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) said on Wednesday that Israeli forces have used “advanced weapons and combat methods, including airstrikes” on the Jenin camp, which is now is “almost uninhabitable” and an estimated 2,000 families have been displaced from the area. December
Roland Friedrich, UNRWA’s director of affairs for the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, said Israel’s “massive operation” in Jenin “risks undermining the fragile cease-fire in Gaza that was reached a few days ago.”
Israeli media also reported that two Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the Wadi Birkin area near the city of Jenin on Wednesday.
Jenin has resisted the Israeli occupation for decades, and has a reputation as the “capital of the Palestinian resistance”. Why is it still important today? pic.twitter.com/Yu9nkRi12w
— AJ+ (@ajplus) January 22, 2025
Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli forces surrounded a building in the town of Birkin and ordered the occupants to leave using loudspeakers.
Airstrikes by Israeli drones targeted the house, and soldiers on the ground fired anti-tank grenades at the building, which was later destroyed by military bulldozers.
As Israeli attacks continued on Tuesday, 10 Palestinians were killed and dozens injured, including children and medical workers, in the Jenin area.
Jenin governor Kamal Abu al-Rab told AFP the situation was “very difficult” as Israeli military bulldozers had torn up all the roads leading to the Jenin refugee camp and Jenin’s public hospital. He said that Israeli forces had also detained about 20 people from villages around Jenin since the operation began on Tuesday.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for “greater restraint” from Israeli forces in Jenin and expressed deep concern, according to his deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq.
On Monday, Guterres told a UN Security Council meeting of his concerns amid Israel’s “existential threat to the integrity and continuity” of Gaza and the occupied West Bank and the “unrelenting” expansion of illegal Israeli settlements. told about
“Senior Israeli officials openly talk about formally annexing all or part of the West Bank in the coming months,” the UN chief said.
“Any such accession would be the gravest violation of international law,” he said.
